Re: dot tel - a new TLD

* noah_mendelsohn@us.ibm.com <noah_mendelsohn@us.ibm.com> [2006-05-16 17:36-0400]
> 
> Dan Connolly writes:
> 
> > -- A Web Address for a Phone Number? Do .Tel
> > By Ben Charny
> > May 15, 2006 
> > http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1962924,00.asp
> > 
> > Sigh... why not tel.hertz.com?
> 
> Indeed, or why not:  application/telephoneNumber+xml?   That way I don't 
> need to bury in any aspect of the URI the nature of the resource, but can 
> return a phone number as the reprsentation for anything that's reasonably 
> represented by a phone number.  I'm probably missing some history that 
> leads one to want to put this in the name in a standard way, but the 
> rationale isn't clear to me.  Seems pretty close to insiting on naming 
> JPEG files with URIs that have a .jpeg suffix.
> 
> In fact, a Web services bigot might say:  why not application/soap+xml, 
> with the returned envelope:
> 
> <s:envelope>
>   ...header here can put dsig to crosscheck
>      the phone number...
>   ...header here can encrypt the phone number..
>   <s:body  xmlns:t="....">
>       <t:telephoneNumber>1234567<t:telephoneNumber>
>   </s:body>
> </s:envelope>
> 
> Overall I'm suggesting that the fact that it's a phone number be encoded 
> in the returned representation, and not (at least not in a standard idiom) 
> in the URI.

But where in the URI? Another place it can live is the URI scheme.
This seems somehow a little cleaner than using TLDs.
Eg see http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2806.txt 
[
Abstract

   This document specifies URL (Uniform Resource Locator) schemes "tel",
   "fax" and "modem" for specifying the location of a terminal in the
   phone network and the connection types (modes of operation) that can
   be used to connect to that entity. This specification covers voice
   calls (normal phone calls, answering machines and voice messaging
   systems), facsimile (telefax) calls and data calls, both for POTS and
   digital/mobile subscribers.
]]

Doubtless we'll be hearing about "fax.tel" and "modem.tel" domains if
TLDism carries on. 

Dan

Received on Tuesday, 16 May 2006 23:03:39 UTC